First Time Growing Anything

No real problems in the first week. I have the plants on shelves in the bathroom under a Mars Hydro TSL2000 which is dialed down enough to shoot for a PPFD of around 400. I pre-mixed water into my soil, so I'm watering very lightly, using just enough water to keep the top layer of coco coir damp which is working out to about 15ml twice a day.

No major issues so far. Week Two has been a continuation of what I've been doing. Using a little more water, maybe 20ml twice a day. I did break down and buy a pH meter - Apera PC60-Z - a little on the pricey side but I think it will prove to be money well spent. Found out my tap water (supplied by a well) is averaging about 8.1. I'm using pH Down and a bit of CalMag to get that closer to around a 6.5. Haven't started any nutrients and considering the soil I'm growing in I might only use them sparingly. I germinate and plant another 4 seeds this week. Considering this is my first rodeo here, I'm reluctant to dive right into trying yield increasing techniques like topping or fimming. I think I'm going to just use this first grow to learn as much as I and waiting to explore yield enhancing techniques til next time around. So... for now if I want more final product I'll just have to grow more plants!

Things are starting to take off now! I've transplanted into a mix of 3 and 5 gallon pots, just wanted to see how much difference there would be when it's all said and done. Plants are now in their grow room under a Mars Hydro SP3000. I'm shooting for a PPFD of around 800-900. I'm watering a pint a day and still not seeing any runoff to speak of. I'm planning to start increasing that amount and getting shifted over to watering every other day. The purchase of the week this week was an IR Thermometer. I spent a few days before transplanting trying to get the grow room temperature and rH dialed in and in the process I fell into the rathole of trying to figure out what is really meant by room temperature vs canopy temperature directly under the lights vs leaf surface temperature. By nature, I'm inclined to overthink everything and clearly growing cannabis is not going to be an exception to that! Maybe smoking some cannabis will take the edge off my tendency to obsess :) With all that said, being able to shoot leaf surface temperatures with an IR thermometer is pretty cool and allows for being able to calculate Vapor Pressure Deficit which will provide some insight into how efficiently the plants can undergo transpiration.

A good week in the grow room. Photo #1 shows my original four plants (I've started 8 more since then) - all four started as germinated seeds on the same day (4 Nov), but a good bit of variety between them. A bit of a side note here, but I'll wanted to put in a good word for ILGM's White Widow autoflowers - Since early Nov my successful germination rate for these seeds (in water) is 12 for 12. Other than having killed one seedling (through my own stupidity) all the seeds have grown into thriving plants in various stages of development. All this in spite of the fact this is my first grow and I really don't know what the hell I'm doing! I couldn't be happier with the seeds I purchased. The two on the left are in 5 gal buckets growing in Fox Farms Coco Loco. The two on the right are in 3 gallon pots and growing in a mixture consisting of equal parts of "big box store" bag soil, coco coir, and perlite. So far I haven't used nutrients on any of them, but I'll probably be easing into doing so as things progress. The largest of these four was starting to cause me some concern as it had so many large fan leaves that they were blocking all light from anything beneath them. So there I sat, holding a pair of shears, trying to talk myself into removing some fan leaves, even though I could think of a number of reasons why I shouldn't. Then, inspiration struck as I said to myself, "maybe I could just try pushing some of the bigger leaves underneath the stems and leaves below them and that way I could expose some potential bud sites to the light." So, I gave that a try and was pleased with the results and tried some more of it. Photo #2 and #3 are the "before and after" on that. Needless to say, I felt like the smartest guy who ever put a cannabis seed into soil- I had really discovered something cool, this idea of tucking big fan leaves under smaller leaves below them. I couldn't wait to get online and share the results of my newfound genius with the entire internet. Still, I hesitated for a second and thought to type the phrase "tucking cannabis leaves" into google. And I'm glad I did, because it turns out I was probably the only guy out there who wasn't aware of this technique called "leaf tucking". Once again, what seemed to to me to be a stroke of genius was actually more a matter of my failing to do better research to begin with :)

A good week. My best performing plant went from 9 inches tall all the way to 17 inches - I'm raising my lights 3 inches at a time every 2 to 3 days. Still not seeing any indication that pistils are developing, so at 38 days after they first sprouted from the soil, I'm saying these are still in the vegetative stage. I see that most White Widow Autoflower growers are getting into flower by week 5, so hopefully I'll see things moving in that direction fairly soon. I started out half of my plants with 1/4 strength Fox Farms Grow Big and Big Bloom this week. The other half are growing in Fox Farms Coco Loco which is supposed to carry enough nutrients on it's own to negate the need for fertilizing until things move into flower. This week's "nice but not necessary" purchase was a Blumat digital tensiometer used to quantify the amount of moisture in soil. I've used it through a couple of watering cycles now and I'm pretty impressed. One thing I learned is that the water/light/ph meter (the kind with the green plastic head and two soil prongs that is sold under a variety of names on Amazon for around $15) is actually pretty reliable, at least as far as moisture goes. When the Blumat tells me I'm right in the middle of the zone for moisture, the needle on my old $15 sensor is pegging right in the middle. If nothing else, the new sensor tells me I can trust the old sensor! Considering that my wife has 2 grow tents and half a bedroom filled with tomato plants and uses the $15 sensors for watering it's actually pretty useful to know they can be trusted. Side Note: I'm amazed at the similarities between growing tomatoes and growing cannabis. Which begs the question "Why can't I buy cannabis for the same $5 a pound that tomatoes cost?" hmmmmm.... - sorta makes a guy wonder. Maybe some cannabis culture old timers can weigh in and share some perspective on that. Has legalization created competition and driven down prices over time, or is the whole "system" just set up to squeeze money out of consumers?

Things kept moving along through week six, but I'm getting more curious all the time as to when they're going to start into flower. Granted, I'm a novice at all of this, but I'd have thought by now I'd have at least started to see pistils developing and I don't. The biggest and oldest of these plants sprouted 45 days ago and is getting noticeably bigger and bushier every day. Even though these are autos and it shouldn't matter (at least hypothetically), I'm starting to wonder if taking their lighting schedule from the current 20/4 and moving to something like a 16/8 might be the nudge they need.

Am I the only guy out there who is over 60 days from sprouting White Widow autoflowers and still isn't seeing any signs of flowering? It's been a couple of weeks since I last updated here - two weeks that I have spent closely staring at these plants and asking myself, "Is that a calyx, or could it actually be a pistil forming". After two weeks of that, I still can't say with any certainty these plants are every going to flower. Grrrrrrrrrr! They're healthy, pushing 30 inches in height, incredibly bushy - if they're 30 inches tall they're probably also at least 30 inches from side to side at the widest point. They're taking about 3 quarts of water each every two days. They're growing in Fox Farm's Coco Loco so I held off on fertilizing til around 6 weeks (they started showing what looked to me like mild signs of a nitrogen deficiency) so I started giving them the schedule for the Fox Farms nutrients at half strength. I expected to at least be admiring the beginnings of buds forming by now, but no such luck. WTF? Beats me. I'm going to let them go like this for one more week, which will have me at 10 weeks since they first broke through the soil, and if things don't appear to be moving along I guess I'll try cutting their light schedule from 20/4 to 12/12. I've read that some autoflowers will have hung on to more of the genetics of the photo-periods they were crossbred with than others and that they need that kick in the ass that comes from reducing the light schedule to move into flowering. Of course it's the internet, so I've also read that this theory is a load of bullshit! Either way, I really can't think of anything else to try at this point. Or am I just being too impatient? From everything I've read, not at least showing some pistils at 9 weeks is pretty far outside of normal for WW autoflower. I'd appreciate any suggestions or ideas about where I'm at with this. :)

Finally, 10 weeks from the time when these White Widow autoflowers first sprouted I can see pistils! So, I'm going to say that they're in flower now, although pre-flower might be a bit more accurate. 6 days ago I cut their light from 20/4 to 12/12 and about 3 days later I saw pistils finally forming. I suppose this could be a coincidence, but I'm coming down on the side that says even though autoflowers hypothetically don't need light reduction to flower, in reality sometimes they do! Otherwise, as the photos show these are large (for an auto), lush, and healthy looking plants. I'm looking forward to seeing what comes next!

I feel like I'm starting to see some real progress now. Plants have definitely moved into flower. I'm watering each of them between 2 and 3 quarts every 2 days, with half strength nutrients included in every other watering.

These plants have only grown an inch or two over the last week. Their real stretch seems to have been around weeks 7 and 8, well before they showed any signs of moving into flower. Still only watering every 2nd day with around 3 quarts per watering, and applying half strength Fox Farms Big Bloom and Tiger Bloom every 4th day. I've thought about bringing those nutrients up to full strength between now and the flush, but in the end have decided against it. Considering I'm growing in FF Coco Loco which is fairly nutrient rich on it's own, my concerns about overdoing it are greater than my dreams of even bigger buds. Today is the first day that the sugar on the sugar leaves was heavy enough to really see with the naked eye, so I went for a closeup shot (last photo) to see how well I could bring the trichomes into view. For anyone that is curious, I shot the photo with a Xenvo Pro 15x macro lens clipped onto an iPhone 11. So far, so good!

16 weeks into this grow and I'm concluding that some things in cannabis cultivation will just be a mystery. Supposedly this first grow are White Widow autoflowers. As a new grower the thought of a quick and easy to grow strain was appealing. As it turns out, I was pushing 11 weeks before these plants started to flower - and then only after I cut their light back to 12/12 - something I didn't expect to have to do. Once they went into flower things really took off! 5 weeks into flower and I'm guessing I'm one or two weeks out from harvesting. It's like they were photoperiods during vegetation and autos during flower! With all that said, I'm not complaining. The plants have been an easy and healthy grow and I think the yields are going to be quite a bit more than I expected. It's been an enjoyable education so far!

I thought I'd better get on here and wrap this grow up before I get too busy with the next one. First things first - I might have thought I order White Widow Autos, but according to the invoice that shipped with the seeds I received White Widow feminized photos. This would sure explain a lot of what I observed during this grow! Knowing myself like I do, I suspect the mistake was all mine and not ILGM's. I harvested 3 plants (at 19, at 20, and at 21 weeks) just to see how much of a difference it made in the final result. For me the last plant I harvested gives a better high than the earlier 2. I included two photos of the root structure - to my untrained eye it looks very healthy and makes me wonder if I might want to go with larger pots next time - I used 5 gallons for this grow - maybe 7's or 10's next time around. What else did I learn... Fungus gnats are manageable, but success will require some effort. In the last half of the grow I ended up pulling all the plants from their grow room and getting them outside on breezy days around once every 2 weeks. Followed by bleaching in the grow room and using a small vacuum to blow and suck bugs away from the plants. I'm glad I grew in an active soil (Fox Farms Coco Loco). I was able to hold off on fertilizing until the plants went into flower about 9 weeks) and after that I only used half strength nutrients every 4 days. I actually watered by weighing the plants on a scale. A little extra work, but it was worth it for reallyt taking out some of the guess work in watering for a new grower who needed all the help he could get. Keep Good Notes! I used a tall (48 inches) oscillating tower fan and I think it helped keep the bugs down and made for an overall stronger plant. I pruned pretty aggressively during the final four weeks. I completely defoliated the lower 10 inches or so to get some much needed ventilation near the soil level. At the first sign that a leaf was showing signs of dying I pruned it which seemed to help keep the bugs down. Also, did a good bit of pruning just to open up buds to more light. I never did a lot all at once, but over time it added up to quite a bit. The plant never seemed any worse for the wear from being aggressively pruned. It took longer than I expected for the plants to reach harvest. In hindsight I quit fertilizing too early. Some humidity is good when drying buds. The rH in my drying area probably average about 20% - way too dry! I should have either humidified the room or started curing way earlier as the buds ended up overly dry. I'm having pretty good success in rehydrating using Bovida humidity pacs, but I should have humidified the room. All in all, I learned a lot and had a lot of fun. I've already started the next grow! From what I can gather, averaging 3.6 ounces per plant for an indoor grow of this strain is pretty good, at least for a first time grower. Best of luck to all and please feel free to reach out if you have any questions.